Unix shell design [was Re: Yes, Unix can do batch renames - Re: Unix handles file extensions "very poorly"?]

On 12/17/2011 11:47 AM, Eric Smith wrote: If you took the course you got to see DEC developed drivers in the flesh. Hence NDA. OVMS was propritory but the interfaces to the OS matched the open concept so developers could work with it without NDA. M$ did and still does have interfaces that are both undocumented they also use backdoor interfaces, never minding the interfaces that were poorly documented or didn't work as described or would change with updates. customers were starting to want open things. They apparently thought (probably correctly) that putting "Open" in the name would trick potential customers and bring in more sales. Other companies did the same thing, but I can't think of any others where the oxymoronic name has lasted as long. One may feel that way but during a time of OSs that were so locked up you needed NDA and developers kit from that vendor before you could start it was the right direction. From the hobby perspective Open always meant Free, and Sources. The professionals it meant access to what was needed and good documentation and training as the OS code was not their job nor anything they wanted to mess with unless broken and for that they expected a level of support that could resolve that. On the other hand VMS was/is trying to maintain a reputation of 24x365 and M$ was reboot often and keep the reset switch on the front of the machine. To have a machine that can do 24x365 you need good hardware and all along there were PCs up to the task but the OSs common were not so robust. From my perspecive at one time I had the luck of running VMS, One of the sorta unix (on pC) servers and NT4.51, VMS the biggest job was keeping the power supplied to the box and occasion new product additions, The unix PC was fairly stable but would suffer from disk and IO issues, the NT3.51 box was same hardware and added BSOD and memory leaks requiring reboots every week or application hangs never minding keeping at it to insure security. Also the VMS machine I could develop and deploy often without neededing to write a line of compiled code as DCL was usually more than enough. The other side of the argument was DEC licenses VMS and with that purchase you got a wall of documentation. The level of documentation runs from user level and system administrator to outright this is what you need to write an app for VMS with all the supporting information. M% and even LINUX does not match that. Granted Linux you can just find the module and read the code but your subject to the writing style of the author and the available documentation and there is the little issue of what was intended vs what it actually did. In the end many programmer do not have the time to wade through hundreds or even thousands of lines of code for a OS bug or misfeature. In the end there was a unix core OS for PCs that was good but who remembers them and what ever happened to them. hint the protocol for networking was IPX because they didn't do IP or DECnet natively. Then there was OS2, SCO Unix and so on. The only PC (WINTEL) based OS that has made inroads on the WINTEL world is Linux and I'd bet 85% of the users cannot compile anything on it, nor wish too, as they use it as applications platform. Allison